University Forum Lecture: “You Can’t Dance to It:” Bebop as
Popular Dance Music The College of Liberal Arts’ University Forum
Lecture Series presents "“ Can’t Dance To it:” Bebop as Popular
Dance Music," a talk by Dr. Christopher J. Wells, Assistant Professor
of Musicology, Arizona State University. Bebop has a longstanding
reputation as a music innately hostile to dancing, but this framing
erases the lived experience of young African Americans in the 1940s
and 1950s who treated bebop as popular music, dancing to it regularly.
This lecture sheds new light on bebop’s status as dance music as
revealed in oral histories with dancers and in Mura Dehn’s research
notes for her film “The Spirit Moves.” Approaching bebop from
social dancers’ perspectives also reveals that bebop’s
“undanceable” reputation has less to do with the music’s
difficulty than with a desire to position bebop as “art” rather
than “entertainment.” Categories: Education | Museums &
Attractions | University & Alumni
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03/04/2020 Last update